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Maryland PIRG Equifax Breach 091217

What's New

Here's our statement by Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski regarding the announcement from Equifax that the retirement of the CEO who presided over its massive data breach and "inadequate, maddening" response was not enough to clean up the credit bureaus. Congress also needs to act to provide free credit freezes for all and to force all of the Big 3 credit bureaus to do a better job.

Today, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) took three critical steps toward protecting consumers and firefighters from the hazards posed by a class of flame retardant chemicals (known as “organohalogens”). The CPSC directed the Commission’s staff to begin the rulemaking process to ban the sale of four categories of consumer products if they contain these chemicals. Once again, the CPSC has made an important action for consumers.

In Baltimore this morning, a release of chlorosulfuric acid occurred at the Solvay Chemicals Plant in Curtis Bay, sparking a 1.2 mile-radius warning from officials. Curtis Bay is a residential, industrial, and commercial community and the 1.2 mile radius included parts of Baltimore City and Baltimore County such as Brooklyn, Brooklyn Park, and east Glen Burnie.

The Equifax breach was already so bad for so many reasons. Reports today that Equifax failed to install Apache Struts security updates it was told about two months before its breach are beyond troubling.

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Here's our statement by Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski regarding the announcement from Equifax that the retirement of the CEO who presided over its massive data breach and "inadequate, maddening" response was not enough to clean up the credit bureaus. Congress also needs to act to provide free credit freezes for all and to force all of the Big 3 credit bureaus to do a better job.

Today, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) took three critical steps toward protecting consumers and firefighters from the hazards posed by a class of flame retardant chemicals (known as “organohalogens”). The CPSC directed the Commission’s staff to begin the rulemaking process to ban the sale of four categories of consumer products if they contain these chemicals. Once again, the CPSC has made an important action for consumers.

In Baltimore this morning, a release of chlorosulfuric acid occurred at the Solvay Chemicals Plant in Curtis Bay, sparking a 1.2 mile-radius warning from officials. Curtis Bay is a residential, industrial, and commercial community and the 1.2 mile radius included parts of Baltimore City and Baltimore County such as Brooklyn, Brooklyn Park, and east Glen Burnie.

The Equifax breach was already so bad for so many reasons. Reports today that Equifax failed to install Apache Struts security updates it was told about two months before its breach are beyond troubling.

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Maryland PIRG joined groups across the country to call on major retailers to address toxic chemicals in their supply chain. Thanks to our work, both Macy’s and Ashley Furniture announced they would stop using toxic flame retardants in their furniture. We also convinced Lowe’s and Home Depot to phase out phthalates from their flooring.

U.S. PIRG joined a broad coalition to deliver one million petitions from Americans, including U.S. PIRG members and supporters, calling on President Obama to shine a light on dark money, or secret political spending.

For the past thirty years, our sister organization U.S. PIRG Education Fund has taken a close look at the safety of toys sold in stores. Their reports have led to more than 150 regulatory actions. In November 2015, they released our 30th annual Trouble in Toyland report.

In our democracy, the size of your wallet shouldn’t determine the volume of your voice. In 2015, we helped win reforms in Maine and Seattle to ensure that more Americans have a greater say in our elections. Seattle’s Initiative-122 empowers small donors with “democracy vouchers” that can be donated to local candidates and lowers the cap on contributions. In Maine, the state’s Clean Elections Act was improved by strengthening campaign finance disclosure laws and offering qualifying candidates increased public funding.

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Bisphenol A, often called BPA, is one of the most widely used and thoroughly studied toxic chemicals. Despite hundreds of scientific studies showing that exposure to BPA is linked to significant health concerns - diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and cancer - it is still used in food cans that millions of Americans buy every day.

“Special districts” are a type of government agency that exist outside of traditional forms of general purpose local or state governments, and serve key governmental functions such as public transit or housing. However, special districts are poorly understood by the public and often do business without adhering to modern standards of government budget or spending transparency.

Medical debt collectors often employ aggressive tactics and attempt to collect debt from the wrong customers – putting consumers' credit records at risk. Medical debt accounts for more than half of all collection items that appear on consumer credit reports. A review of 17,701 medical debt collection complaints submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) shows that problems with medical debt collection are widespread and harm Americans across the country.

Lead is contaminating drinking water at schools and pre-schools across the country. As our report shows, states are so far failing to make the grade when it comes to keeping lead out of drinking water at school.

On February 13, nearly 60 local, state and national student advocacy, professional, consumer, educational, faith and other organizations sent a letter to Congressional leaders expressing "strong support for the crucial work the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) does on behalf of student loan borrowers." The "borrower-focused" letter also urged Congress "to ensure the agency remains well-positioned to solve borrowers’ problems, which includes protecting the Bureau’s single-Director structure and its independent funding, and maintaining Director Richard Cordray until his term ends.

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Hackers gained access to the personal data of as many as 143 million Americans in the Equifax breach. Here are some recommended actions consumers can take to protect themselves and answers to frequently asked questions.

Hurricane Harvey was a natural disaster, and a devastating one at that. During and after the hurricane, we learned anew that it’s not only the initial storm that threatens life and limb, but also chemical facilities that are hit. As Irma bears down on Florida, we hope for the best outcome for the people of Florida. We also want the state to prepare for the worst. In that spirit, here are some resources and information on storms, chemicals and public safety.

What would you do if you knew that the Big 3 credit bureaus were in the Top 5 of complaint leaders to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and that their mistake-ridden reports caused consumers to either be denied jobs or pay more for or be denied credit due to those mistakes? Well, if you were the leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, you'd consider not one, but two bills to make this worse by eliminating strong consumer protections and eliminating some and limiting other damages payable to consumers when credit bureaus wreck their lives. You'd hide a massive weakening of consumer protections inside a Trojan Horse bill that claims to be about letting the credit bureaus help people.

With the U.S. Department of Education failing to protect students from unfair practices, the states and the District of Columbia have begun to enact student loan servicing protections. Here's an overview of what's happening in the "laboratories of democracy."